Troubleshooting payment and credit issues

Payment and credit issues come up in a handful of distinct flows. Each has a specific cause and recovery path.

"My charge was declined"

Most card declines come from your bank, not us. Common causes:

• Card expired. Replace it in Payment Methods.
• Insufficient funds on the card.
• Your bank's fraud system flagged the charge (especially for first-time SaaS purchases or international transactions). Call your bank to approve.
• Card has been replaced and the old one is still set as default. Update it.
• 3DS / SCA challenge was abandoned mid-flow (especially in EU/UK transactions). Complete the security challenge through the bank popup.
• Crypto payment underpaid or arrived after rate window expired. The transaction stays in pending; contact support for resolution.

Fix

1. Try a different card from a different issuer (rules out bank-side fraud holds).
2. Update your card in Payment Methods if it has expired or changed.
3. For repeated declines on legitimate cards, contact your bank — they can pre-authorize Valid Email Checker as a known merchant.

"I paid but credits did not appear"

For card payments, credits land within seconds of payment clearing. For crypto, it can take several minutes for on-chain confirmation. If credits still have not appeared after:

• 5 minutes for card payments — refresh the dashboard. Sometimes the WebSocket update misses; a refresh forces a fresh read.
• 30 minutes for crypto — check the transaction status on the blockchain explorer (the transaction ID is on your CoinPayments receipt).

If credits still missing after the appropriate wait window:

1. Check Account Settings → Invoices for the payment record. If the invoice is Paid, the credits should be in your account — refresh once more.
2. Check Credits History for the credit-allocation row. If you see the payment but no credit row, there's a backend reconciliation issue worth a support ticket.
3. Email support@validemailchecker.com with the invoice number and the approximate payment timestamp.

"My subscription shows Past Due"

A past_due status means the scheduled renewal charge failed. The system:

• Created a pending invoice with a 7-day due date.
• Set current_period_end and next_billing_date to 7 days from now (the grace period).
• Sent an invoice_created_pending email with the invoice link.
• Kept your monthly credits active for the 7 days.

Critically: the cron does NOT automatically retry the card. You must pay the pending invoice manually from /invoices/{invoice_number} to reactivate. See what happens if my card fails on a subscription renewal for the full mechanics.

Fix

1. Click the Pay button on the past-due banner (Account Settings → Billing & Payments).
2. Pick a payment method during checkout — you can use a new card if the old one expired.
3. Complete payment. Subscription reactivates to active immediately, current_period_end advances to 30 days from the payment.

"Auto-refill is suddenly disabled"

Auto-refill auto-disables in two cases:

• 3 consecutive payment failures. The retry schedule is 1 hour after the 1st failure, 24 hours after the 2nd; after the 3rd consecutive failure, auto_refill_enabled is set to false and auto_disabled_reason is set to payment_failures. The toggle shows a yellow warning indicator in the header.
• Monthly cap reached. If you set the monthly limit to 3 and the system ran 3 refills this calendar month, auto-refill auto-disables until the start of the next month. The toggle shows a blue info indicator.

Fix for payment-failure disable

1. Update the card on Payment Methods → add a fresh one, set as default.
2. Go to the auto-refill settings modal and re-enable.
3. The failure count resets when you re-enable.

Fix for monthly-limit disable

• Either wait for the start of the next month (counter resets) and re-enable.
• Or raise the monthly limit and re-enable now.

"My invoice does not show my company details"

Invoices use the billing information stored under Account Settings → Invoices → Invoice Settings. If your company name, VAT number, or address are missing from a downloaded invoice:

1. Open Invoice Settings, fill in the relevant fields, save.
2. Re-download the invoice. The PDF picks up your current billing details — so previously-generated invoices can be re-downloaded with updated info.

See invoices and receipts for the full walkthrough.

"I see a charge I do not recognize"

Check Account Settings → Invoices. Every charge has a matching invoice record there. If you see a charge on your card statement that does not match anything in your Invoices tab:

• Make sure you are looking at the right Valid Email Checker account (you might have multiple).
• Check whether the charge was actually from Paddle (the Merchant of Record for some regions) — Paddle charges show up on your statement as "Paddle" or similar, not "Valid Email Checker".
• If after both checks the charge is genuinely unexplained, email support@validemailchecker.com with the date, amount, and statement description. We investigate and reverse unauthorized charges.

"My credits decreased without me running a job"

Common explanations:

• A team member ran a job. Check Credits History — every spend row shows which member ran it.
• An integration ran a scheduled verification. Check the integrations page for active connections.
• An API call consumed credits. Check the per-key Credits Used column on the Developer page.
• Subscription renewal replaced the monthly bucket — old unused monthly credits expire at renewal (no rollover), and the new allocation lands. The total looks lower because unused old credits did not carry over.

Next steps